many as fifty clerks-perhaps there are about forty of these offices, and there the abuses are greatest-until the President shall direct it to be done. He, of course, will be guided by the results in these large offices. The Bill interferes in no way with the term or tenure of office, except by committing Congress to the theory that removals should not be made for refusing to pay political assessments. A law of 1820 and some later acts, as is well known, have reduced the term of postmasters, collectors, and certain other officers to four years, thereby causing more frequent and demoralizing contests for those offices than would have existed if the term had remained what it was under the Constitution itself. The Pendleton Bill, however, leaves these acts undisturbed. A measure so moderate and carefully guarded may perhaps enable the friends of reform in both parties to unite in its support.

What is the most appropriate term for these offices-if a fixed term be found advisable-can be better determined after we have had more experience under a system which brings persons into office because they are most worthy to fill them. Then we may hope that partisan influence will be so much excluded and excessive activity for securing places so much allayed that there will be a fair degree of wisdom and independence for settling the question wisely. The only term that could now be fixed would probably be one of four years. Strange fallacies seem to find credence as to the relation between the reform system, or competitive examinations, and the term of office. The way of getting into office may-almost necessarily does-determine the kind of a man you have there, but in no way the length of time he is to stay. The shorter the time he is to stay, the more he needs to know when he enters; for if he have but little time to learn, he may go out by the time he has fairly mastered his duties. The better men the people get for office, the more inclined they will undoubtedly be to keep them a considerable time. Yet, in whatever way persons may come into the service, it is too plain for argument that the term may be long or short. It may be for six months, as in some of the New England colonies, or for one year, as in the case of the Athenian generals; or for four years, so as to make the place of every porter, door-keeper, and washerwoman dependent upon the result of a Presidential election; or it may be for any longer time, as the public good may require. If a man selects a good wife rather than a bad

one, he is not, for that reason, prevented from getting a divorce; or chooses a competent doctor rather than a quack, he is not for that reason compelled never to dismiss him, however much the probabilities may be increased that it will be a longer time before he will wish to do so. Theories and assumptions to the contrary would never have been advanced were they not needed to sustain a spoils system indefensible upon sound reasoning.

It is only necessary to consider the character of the existing abuses which we have stated to see that by far the greater part of them grow out of the way of getting into office, and the partisan and corrupt influences to which officials are constantly subjected. Nearly all these abuses existed in an equal or greater degree in Great Britain before the reform system was enforced, and where the tenure was during efficiency and good behavior. The competitive system removed them. There will be few removals without cause when the vacancy can be filled only through competition, and not by influence and pushing. Now officials are pushed out in order that favorites may be pushed in. Where competition prevails, the favorite of the great politician is very likely to be beaten by a more worthy competitor destitute of influence.

A life term of office is out of the question. Neither children nor dotards are useful in administering the government. We must select officials by means that will secure the most competent. They must go out of the service when-and if the public interest is to be regarded, only when-they cease to be the most useful to be in it. The right to remove, and the duty to remove equally essential to discipline, to efficiency, and to economy-must exist, and removals ought to be made, and alike whether terms be long or short: (1) For incompetency, mental or physical, for the public work; (2) by reason of conviction of a criminal offense, at least if involving dishonesty; (3) for immoral or dishonest conduct, dangerous or disgraceful to official life; (4) for willful disobedience to legal and reasonable regulations or instructions, at least if persisted in; and perhaps for some other causes.

Whether, contrary to the practice from the beginning, there should be an arbitrary limitation, either based on the time they have held their particular offices (or any and all offices in the Federal service) or upon the age they have reached, according to which there would be a rotation among the tens of thousands of clerks in all the departments and in all the post-offices, customhouses, and other offices in the country,-or whether the original

constitutional term should still prevail, will, when thoughtfully considered, be found a grave question, involving the independence of the Executive, the counterpoise of our system A fouryears' term would, for example, require-aside from all removals for cause and without cause-more changes at Washington each year than have taken place there under any administration, and at least one change every day in the custom-house at New York; in other words, changes as frequent, for an established order of things, as have ever taken place in the most proscriptive period following a presidential election! The partisan machine for filling vacancies would need to be kept working every day. Its constant activity would redouble the clamor and the pressure for removals. Who can say they would be resisted? If the to be laid down that a clerk is to go out arbitrarily, at a particular time, and not because he has ceased to be the best clerk, what good reason could be given against sending him away at once, when another, an official or partisan favorite, pushed for the place? Since the right to remove for cause must remain, however short the term, it might, as easily as now, be abused for such a purpose. If rotation, on the communistic theory of giving everybody a chance to get into office, is to bring the term down to four years, the very reasoning on which rotation rests would require that the term should be shortened by arbitrary removals, or further reduced, if need be, to four months, whenever it shall appear that there are still outsiders demanding offices. In the very name of rotation, they would demand it. Such are the inevitable consequences of departing from the true rule, which is, to fix the term of office with stern and sole reference to the most beneficial doing of the public work. Every other rule is the rule of demagogues and communists, demoralizing as an example, disastrous in its effects, impracticable in its enforcement.

DORMAN B. EATON.

SHALL AMERICANS OWN SHIPS?

SINCE the war, public attention has been drawn more or less to the marked decline in American shipping. It has been generally assumed and conceded that this was a matter for regret, and some discussion has arisen as to remedies-what to do, in fact, in order to bring it about that Americans should own ships. In these discussions, there has generally been a confusion apparent in regard to three things which ought to be very carefully distinguished from each other: ship-building, the carrying trade, and foreign commerce.

First. As to ship-building-Americans began to build ships, as an industry, within fifteen years after the settlement at Massachusetts Bay. They competed successfully as ship-builders, before the Revolution, with the Dutch and English, and they sold ships to be used by their rivals. Tonnage and navigation laws played an important part in the question of separation between the colonies and England, and the same laws took an important place in the formation of the Federal Constitution. One generation was required for the people of this country to get over the hard logical twist in the notion that laws which were pernicious when laid by Great Britain were beneficial when laid by ourselves. The vacillation which has marked the history of our laws about tonnage and navigation is such that it does not seem possible to trace the effects of legislation upon ship-building. In the decade 1850-1860 a very great decline in the number of ships built, especially for ocean traffic, began to be marked. Sails began to give way to steam, but the building of steam-ships required great advantages of every kind in the production of engines and other apparatus that is, it required the presence, in a highly developed state, of a number of important auxiliary and coöperating industries. As iron was introduced into ship-building, of course the ship-building industry became dependent upon cheap supplies of

iron, as it had before been dependent on cheap supplies of wood. No doubt these changes in the conditions of the industry itself have been the chief cause of the decline in ship-building in this country, and legislation has only had incidental effects. It is a plain fact of history that the decline in ship-building began before the war and the high tariff. Of course the effects produced by changes in the conditions of an industry are inevitable. They are not to be avoided by any legislation. They are annoying because they break up acquired habits and established routine, and they involve loss in a change from one industry to another, but legislation can never do anything but cause that loss to fall on some other set of people instead of on those directly interested. Within the last few years it has become certain that steel is to be the material of ocean vessels-a new improvement which will not tend to bring the industry back to this country. On the whole, therefore, the decline in shipbuilding of the last twenty-five years seems to indicate that somebody else than ourselves must build the world's ships for the present. We have, by legislative devices, forced the production of a few ocean steamers, but these cases prove nothing to the contrary of our inference. If this nation has a hobby for owning some ships built in this country, and is willing to pay enough for the gratification of that hobby, no doubt it can secure the pleasure it seeks. A fisherman who has caught nothing sometimes buys fish at a fancy price. He saves himself mortification and gets a dinner, but the possession of the fish does not prove that he has profitably employed his time or that he has had sport.

Second. The carrying trade differs from ship-building as carting differs from wagon-building. Carrying is the industry of men who own ships. Their interests are more or less hostile to those of the ship-builders. Ship-owners want to buy new ships at low prices. They want the number of competing ships kept small. They want freights high. In all these points the interest of the ship-builder is the opposite. The ship-owner is indifferent where he gets his ships. He only wants them cheap and good. There is no sentiment in the matter any more than there is in the purchase of wagons by an express company, or carriages by a livery-stable keeper.

Third. Foreign commerce is still another thing. It consists in the exchange of the products of one country for those of